Laura Ingraham Is Ready to Rev Up Fox News

Image

Laura Ingraham in a studio at the Washington bureau of Fox News Bureau on Tuesday. She will take over the channel’s 10 p.m. weeknight time slot next week.CreditJustin T. Gellerson for The New York Times

SCOTTSDALE, Ariz. — Laura Ingraham landed here in a private jet and climbed into a waiting S.U.V., accompanied by her personal assistant, a publicist, and a single piece of luggage.

The private plane was paid for by the publisher of her latest book, “Billionaire at the Barricades: The Populist Revolution From Reagan to Trump.” The publicist came courtesy of her new primary employer, Fox News.

“I love it out here,” Ms. Ingraham said, seated in the back seat as a string of desert resorts glided by last week.

She was on her way to speak at a fund-raiser for Kelli Ward, the insurgent Republican primary challenger to Senator Jeff Flake. Stephen K. Bannon — the executive chairman of Breitbart News, former White House chief strategist for President Trump and one of Ms. Ingraham’s pals — was also on the program.

Next week, Ms. Ingraham, 53, will take over one of the most coveted slots on cable television: 10 p.m. on Fox News. At the event for Ms. Ward, she served up some of her high-dudgeon populism to a Hilton hotel ballroom filled with several hundred fans, denouncing the “Democrat-media complex” before launching into an acidic attack on Mr. Flake, a critic of President Trump.

“Since we are in the south, I can say bless his heart, but it’s time to melt the snowflake,” she said as the room vibrated with boos. A chant of “Build that wall!” broke out.

(On Tuesday, a week after Ms. Ingraham’s trip to Arizona, Mr. Flake announced he was out of the race. “#MeltSnowFlake accomplished,” Ms. Ingraham wrote victoriously on Twitter.)

Fox News hosts are not usually allowed to stump for candidates, but Ms. Ingraham was granted an exception because her show had not yet begun. An ardent nationalist, a Trump confidante, and a foe of open borders, Ms. Ingraham said in an interview with The New York Times that she wants to represent “the working-class, populist sensibility that is the beating heart of the Republican Party right now.”

Image

Steve Bannon, the former White House chief strategist and a friend of Ms. Ingraham, speaking at a rally for an Arizona Senate candidate where Ms. Ingraham also took the stage.CreditLaura Segall for The New York Times

She added, “I hope that a lot of the men and women who feel forgotten in this country really see that they have in me a champion.”

An acolyte of Ronald Reagan, Robert Bork and Pat Buchanan, Ms. Ingraham was among the first commentators to endorse Mr. Trump in the presidential campaign. Many pundits on Fox News took longer to follow her lead, especially as Mr. Trump feuded with the network’s star anchor, Megyn Kelly.

Before Election Day, Fox News executives were talking up a new focus on straight news coverage. Post-Trump, the channel’s prime-time lineup has moved to the right, installing the combative Tucker Carlson in the 8 p.m. slot and Sean Hannity at 9.

“Laura Ingraham is as about as hard-core a Trump defender as they could have put on the air at this point,” said Charlie Sykes, the longtime conservative radio host and MSNBC analyst. “Right now, that’s what the Fox News viewership wants. They want the Trump red meat.”

Ms. Ingraham is well-suited to deliver it. In Scottsdale, she was greeted as a hero by the Trump-supporting crowd.

“Everyone at Fox News was afraid to say they wanted Trump,” said Mary Waldren, 53, of Ahwatukee, Ariz., one of several hundred attendees who had paid up to $2,700 a ticket to attend the rally for Ms. Ward. “She’s going to be good for Fox News. They’re lucky to have her.”

When Ms. Ward took the microphone, she held up a copy of Ms. Ingraham’s new book, which praises the rise of Mr. Trump and economic nationalism.

As an early supporter of Mr. Trump, Ms. Ingraham landed a prime speaking slot at the Republican National Convention. She said she now speaks with the president a few times a month. “Sometimes, I call him, and occasionally, I’ll get a call,” she said nonchalantly.

Image

Ms. Ingraham signed books at a fund-raiser for Kelli Ward, who was mounting a primary challenge to Senator Jeff Flake. When Mr. Flake dropped out of the race, Ms. Ingraham made a victorious post on Twitter.CreditLaura Segall for The New York Times

But unlike Mr. Hannity, another confidant of the president, Ms. Ingraham has shown a willingness to publicly bite the hand. In the interview, she criticized the “snail’s pace” of staff appointments and knocked the president for “stepping on his own message at times.”

“This is about the movement,” she said. “Trump is invaluable — he’s the titular head of the movement. But it’s like with George W. Bush. I campaigned for him in 2004, and by the end of it, I wasn’t invited to any of the White House events.”

Shawna Noyes, who waited in line for a half-hour for Ms. Ingraham to sign a book, said that Mr. Hannity was sometimes too soft on the president. “I think she’s going to be tough,” said Ms. Noyes, who runs a steel company in Phoenix.

The president, an avid Fox viewer, has not been not shy about registering his displeasure with critical coverage. What will he think of Ms. Ingraham?

“You know, he’ll probably, uh, be irked,” Ms. Ingraham said, staring straight ahead. “We are friends, but friends tell friends when they go off course. And I’m sure he’ll tell me when he thinks I’m deviating from what’s proper and thoughtful. And I’ll do the same with him.”

Ms. Ingraham lives in Virginia with her three adopted children. She grew up in Glastonbury, Conn., the daughter of a waitress and the owner of a carwash. Media criticism began at home: She wrote in her book that she could remember her father deriding the anchor Walter Cronkite and his famed signoff, “That’s the way it is.”

“No, Walt, that’s the way you say it is!” her father would reply.

Ms. Ingraham honed her craft in college at The Dartmouth Review, the undergraduate right-wing journal that earned national recognition (and some revulsion) for stunts that, in hindsight, presaged the antics of Breitbart reporters.

“All the way back to Dartmouth, I was part of the insurgency,” she said.

In an era before mainstream acceptance of homosexuality, Ms. Ingraham assigned a reporter to attend a meeting of the campus gay students’ alliance and published a transcript of the proceedings, naming names. Years later, she apologized, citing in part the experience of her gay brother and his partner, who had AIDS.

In law school at the University of Virginia, she drove a Honda hatchback with the license plate “FARRGHT.” In Washington, as a young conservative on the rise, Ms. Ingraham worked in the Reagan White House, clerked for Justice Clarence Thomas, and founded a right-wing retreat cheekily dubbed “The Dark Ages.” (Arianna Huffington was on the steering committee.) A New York Times Magazine article described her joy-riding in Washington in her green Land Rover, blasting zydeco music at midnight.

Image

Ms. Ingraham in a Fox News studio in Washington. She said she wants to represent “the working-class, populist sensibility that is the beating heart of the Republican Party right now.”CreditJustin T. Gellerson for The New York Times

She was among the first crop of commentators at the dawn of the cable-news era, hosting a show on MSNBC and, along with Kellyanne Conway and Ann Coulter, earning the nickname “the pundettes.” By the early 2000s, her radio talk show was carried by more than 200 stations and her books — “The Hillary Trap,” “Of Thee I Zing,” “Power to the People” — sold by the millions.

Some of her remarks brought outrage. “No one wants to see fat people on the cover of magazines in swimsuits,” she said during a television appearance. She has also been the recipient of name-calling: Ed Schultz, the former MSNBC host, was suspended for calling her “a right-wing slut.”

Still, her move into Mr. Bannon’s Breitbart circle — considered a fringe of the right-wing until Mr. Trump’s victory — was not inevitable. Her embrace of Mr. Trump strained her relationship with some of her fellow conservatives.

“Laura represents her own unique brand,” said Christopher Ruddy, who runs Newsmax, a Fox News competitor. “She comes out of the milieu of talk radio, where the economics of that business have driven a lot of hosts who were moderately conservative to be a little edgier.”

Ms. Ingraham joined Mr. Bannon in 2014 to endorse David Brat, an outsider Republican who would go on to win a surprise victory over Eric Cantor, then the Republican majority leader in the House. She had been encouraged to back Mr. Brat by a producer, Julia Hahn, who went on to write for Breitbart and now works in the White House.

Asked if she is bringing a Breitbart viewership to Fox News, Ms. Ingraham responded: “I wouldn’t call it a Breitbart audience. I would call it America.”

“I like Tom Wolfe’s description of the country,” she continued. “There’s America. The coasts are like the parentheses. In between is the country.”

Her show, she said, would go beyond politics: “Parenting, how technology is changing our lives, the pornified culture that our children are marinating in.”

So is a makeover à la Ms. Kelly — who has softened her on-air persona for her new morning show on NBC — in the cards?

“What do you think?” Ms. Ingraham said, sarcastically. “We’re going to have a stove in the back, and we’re going to have popovers.” She laughed. “No. I won’t be doing that.”